Dennis DuVall, a member of Veterans For Peace, packs for his trip to Gaza with 1,000 other peace delegates to raise awareness of the devastation that Israel inflicted on Gaza during its invasion last year. (Matt Hinshaw, The Daily Courier)

Dennis DuVall takes the spirit of the holiday season both literally and very personally.

To that end, he has committed this year to a most non-traditional way of celebrating peace on earth and good will toward men.

DuVall leaves his Prescott home Wednesday for a two-week humanitarian and peace mission to the Middle East as part of a 1,000-member international coalition sponsoring the Gaza Freedom March on Dec. 31.

When not providing care and support for the refugees on the one-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion into Gaza, DuVall will spend his 68th birthday on Jan. 1 serving a moral imperative to get involved and help his fellow man.

He has a good idea of what to expect when he arrives. "I think I'll see a fairly devastated society," DuVall said from his home in Prescott.

The World Refugee Survey estimates more than one million refugees are in the Gaza Strip.

According to a United Nations report on Palestine refugees, the blockade imposed by Israel in June 2007 after the Hamas takeover has seriously affected all aspects of Palestinian life.

The past year has witnessed continued violations of international law, including humanitarian and human rights law, and the infliction of further harm and suffering on the Palestine refugee population, Feda Abdelhady-Nasser, adviser on Palestine, noted in her November remarks to the United Nations. She further stated that the continuing blockade "had ensured that the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip continued to live in misery amid the ruins of their homes and communities, intensifying their deprivation and hardship and inflaming feelings of injustice."

DuVall, for one, took notice.

"I can't say I really understand what in the heck is going on over there," he said. "I can't imagine why a group of people would be subjected to a siege like that."

DuVall will join the International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza, which formed after Israel's 22-day assault on Gaza last winter. The contingent represents all faiths, and will mark one year since the Israeli attack with a nonviolent march alongside the people of Gaza on Dec. 31, in a call to end the blockade.

DuVall, an activist who was arrested in 2008 for writing "Stop the Killing" on the window of a local Army recruiting office, is no stranger to fighting for causes larger than himself. He served in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1960s and was part of a reserve unit voluntarily deployed to Vietnam where he spent a year flying on an aircrew transport.

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